“Come on,” he said. “We’ve got to get over there!”
Fifty
Dirty Harry picked up the phone and heard, “Call me.”
He sauntered out of the Bunco bullpen and down the hall to the bank of pay phones, tapped out the number, got Luminitsa.
“Last night he signed the deed and the power of attorney,” she said. “I can list the house and close out his brokerage accounts this afternoon. With a good dose of magic salt in his breakfast, another at lunchtime, he’ll be gone by nightfall.”
“Shouldn’t I be with you? All that cash...”
The greedy turd: eventually, he’d have to go, too.
“Relax, lover. Come around six, we’ll drink champagne and hold his hand while he goes.” Her throaty chuckle was like her hand caressing his groin.
Larry ducked in and out through the thickening clots of morning traffic on 19th Avenue, took a left into Sloat, squealed uphill into Portola Drive, stood on the brakes. It was a modest stucco two-story in the 900 block, but in San Francisco’s red-hot real estate market probably worth close to a million bucks. Plenty to kill for, if you were the killing kind.
Midori was holding back. “Luminitsa my friend! She no do anything like—”
“You may not believe it, but Whit needs help. You stay here.”
Midori, good submissive little Japanese girl, stayed. A short flight of terrazzo steps led to a minuscule porch. Larry put his finger on the bell and left it there, Ken Warren — style. The door was flung open. Luminitsa Djurik glared out at him.
Her magnificent body was barely concealed by a filmy negligee; he could see the sharp brown thrust of her nipples against the thin bodice. She really did look a lot like Yana, though she sure didn’t sound like her.
“Go goddam away. I’ve got a sick fucking man here.”
To the left was a stairway leading to the second floor; to the right a living room with a nice fireplace. Ballard strode through it to the dining room, through that into the small neat kitchen. Luminitsa was right behind him. No Whit.
“Where is he?”
“In bed, you goddammed fool! He’s sick, for Chrissake!”
“Yeah, and we both know what made him that way.”
Luminitsa grabbed a butcher knife off the rack and was only a dozen seconds behind him into Whit’s room at the head of the stairs. Larry bent to scoop up the frail old man from his bed.
“I’m taking him to the hospital. They’ll run blood tests and find out just what the hell you’ve been pumping into him.”
With a shriek, Luminitsa leaped at him, sweeping down the foot-long razor-sharp blade over his shoulder and at his chest.
That’s when stocking-footed Midori slammed her in the back of the head with the frying pan she had carried up from the kitchen after sneaking in despite Larry’s order.
Twice, driving in to work, Giselle caught a glimpse of the same dark sedan behind her. Her phone was ringing when she got to her desk. It was Larry Ballard. When he hung up, she was no longer worried about being tailed. She counted on it. She called Geraldine, caught her going out the door to work.
Rosenkrantz spun off the wall to smash the heel of his heavy shoe into the flimsy door just at the latch. It flew back against the wall with a crash. He went in low and to the left, Guildenstern, behind him, high and to the right. Two women were in the room. The cops holstered their pieces.
“Okay, you’ve had your little joke!” yelled Guildenstern. “Now, where in the fuck is Yana?”
Giselle Marc said to the round-faced Italian-looking woman with her, “The hairball is Guildenstern, the cueball is Rosenkrantz. They’re supposed to be Homicide cops.” To the cops, she said coldly, “I believe Yana has left the country.”
“How? She doesn’t have a passport, she can’t get one from a Gypsy documenter because she’s marime...” Rosenkrantz stopped to point at Giselle. “You! You gave her your passport!”
“My passport was recently stolen, yes,” Giselle admitted haughtily. “I have reported the loss to the State Department and have applied for a replacement document.”
Guildenstern grinned evilly. “You ain’t gettin’ away with that one, sister. We’re gonna fry your pretty little butt—”
“Oh, grow up. Yana isn’t your killer.”
“I suppose you’re gonna tell us who is,” he sneered.
“I sure am. A woman named Luminitsa Djurik. She married Ephrem in a civil ceremony as Nadja Mihai. Together they murdered two old men with what she called magic salt.”
Despite himself, Rosenkrantz was listening.
“But those two old guys died of digitalis poisoning.”
“Magic salt is dried, crushed foxglove leaves. She would sprinkle it over their food like salt in small progressive doses like arsenic poisoning. Eventually they’d just... waste away.”
“Where do we find this mythical broad?” asked Guildenstern with a sneer in his voice.
Giselle smiled sweetly. “After she killed Ephrem, she started slowly poisoning a third old man named Whit Stabler—”
Rosenkrantz, obviously now a believer, was aghast.
“You knew this and you didn’t report it so we—”
“Would you have listened to me? This way, Mr. Stabler is safe in the hospital and Larry Ballard is at his home on Portola Drive right now, holding Luminitsa Djurik for you. She was trying to kill him and got knocked out with a frying pan.”
Guildenstern sighed. “Let’s go get her, partner. This lady here is just too goddammed much for me.”
When they were gone, Geraldine asked, “Can I tell Yana the news?”
Giselle was a bit surprised. “You know where she is?”
“She calls me from Rome.”
“Rome again,” said Giselle. “Dan Kearny’s in Rome. He’s staying at a place called San Filippo Neri.”
“A convent?” asked Geraldine.
“Yes. How did you know?”
“I’m Italian, remember. I know my Italian saints.” She sighed. “I don’t know anything about the world. San Francisco is the farthest I’ve ever been from Dubuque.”
An hour later, Yana called Geraldine from Rome. An hour after that, she descended from her room at the Hotel Canada with both suitcases in hand. All her sophistication of dress and manner were gone. Her hair pulled back, her face without makeup, she looked like a schoolgirl in Rome for the religious celebrations. The thick-featured balding man at the front desk looked at her in heavy-lidded surprise.
“Parte già, Signorina?”
“I’m going to my cousin’s,” she laughed. She shook her hand in that very Italian gesture, with the limp fingers waggling from side to side. “Everything costs so much!”
She caught a bus to the Stazione and after three streetcar rides checked into the convent of San Filippo Neri.
Dirty Harry climbed the stairs silently. Already his one-eyed snake was twitching in his pants in expectation of the sexual delights to come. Whit’s room was dim; the shades were down, the curtains closed. A motionless form was just visible on the bed. The old fart must already have died.
Then the dead man sat up. Harry gave a strangled cry of terror — and the lights went on. Rosenkrantz was sitting under the covers, beaming at him.
“Harry my man, who makes the ideal groom for a murderess?”
Guildenstern said to Harry’s back, “An old guy with a million-dollar house who dies on his wedding day.”
“Except Whit didn’t die.” Rosenkrantz was off the bed.
Harry found his voice. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I was just going to—”
“Shut the fuck up,” Guildenstern advised him.